Home insurance renewal

stefano

I have received a reminder notice from Direct Line, about renewing my home insurance, building and contents, for £309, and thinking about reducing my premium, I went to a few major insurers, and while some charged less, Norwich union and tesco, one charged an astronomical amount, and that was the one that's proud to be different, nationwide. Then my OH suggested to get a fresh quote from direct line, and to my surprise, it returned a quote of £214. I think insurance companies are ripping people off with renewals, and something should be done about it.

Astaroth

What should be done about it though Stefano?

Direct Line and other other insurance companies will be loosing money when they give you an offer of £214 as a new customer. To be able to do this they have to obviously recoup the money in later years (ie when you renew). Given that most insurers have arround a 70-85% renewal rate you would see new business going up massively and renewals coming down a little.

Looking at your quotes as an example. If you did what you suggest and remove new business discounts you would have to pay £290 every year for your insurance. Alternatively we can keep new business discounts and you can save yourself £76 a year by not renewing and re-registering as a new customer. Plus this is only considering year 1 renewals... add the subsequent and the price would have to go higher still.

regularsaver1

tesco and direct line only got 3 stars in a recent defacto (however its spelt) survey

marks and spencers got 5 stars for its contents but not buildings, halifax got 5 stars for both, worth looking at all factors - not all are unlimited cover

tazdevil1211

Have you thought about tryin Confused.com?? They seem to be pretty good & take all the 'legwork' out of phoning round all the different companies.

Astaroth

defacto (think you spelt it right) is a con though. It doesnt factor in service and only has fixed point scoring... you can easily create a rubbish product to get 5 stars as you tick the boxes they score on but could have an amazing product with a lot of useful extras (eg covering student children when away at uni) but as it isnt on the tick sheet you only get 3 stars.

livinginhope

I was chuffed with our renewal,it had only gone up 25 quid and that follows a claim for 96k,other insurance companies wouldn't even touch us,couldn't get a quote from anyone,so for the 1st time ever,thanks Egg,you've done us proud!

Mizz_Pink

Ours is £517.65 with Direct Line, i'm looking to change.

ArchieB_2

Astorath - Surprised to hear that you think an independent company analysing the benefits of a policy is a con and I don't understand who they are conning. I wonder if you work for one of the more lowly rated companies??;)

From what I can see there ratings seem to make a lot of sense but where can you get info on service to add to it I wonder. A rare ill-informed post.:rolleyes:

Astaroth

It is not service it is policy features....

To name another poor system which is better than defacto as their is some service level included but take a hotels star rating....
To get a 5* rating you must have certain things like a swimming pool, resturant which takes non-resident customers and rooms that are at least X square meters.

Which is better....
A) hotel where every single room is exactly X square meters, a poor resturant but it does take non-resident customers and a 10m pool and so is a 5* or....

hotel where every room is over 2X square meters, an outstanding resturant which takes non-resident customers but as it is city centre it doesnt have a pool and so is only a 4*

On the star rating hotel A is better and yet if you dont consider a swimming pool a high priority then hotel B is actually better.

I work for a number of brands so have a range of de facto scores - backing this up is the fact that it is actually one of our lowest scoring brands that actually has by far the highest satisfaction scores from customers.

ArchieB_2

This is true of all rating systems but they are only a guide. I take it the AA Hotel Star Ratings are a con as well then.

I am not suggesting they are the solution to everything but I know I would go for a product from a name I recognise, with a product that meets my needs and at a price I can afford. The fact that it has wide and deep cover as proven by independent analysis would reassure me.

Anyway, service is irrelevant if the policy does not cover you for your claim. At least you may be politely and efficiently turned down come claim time I suppose.

Astaroth

Not necessarily... service can include the application of the policy so policy A may state that they do something and they do... but no more and no less where as policy B doesnt catagorically state they do the same but they routinely do and go further than on policy A.

Likewise, they could say that they recover your vehicle if it is undrivable (that gets the point) but there is a big difference between a company that will recover the vehicle within the hour compared to another one which leaves you standing there with your battered vehicle for 4 hours before they collect it. Both however would get the same de facto score.

The hotel rating system is also a con to some degree but the star rating with them does actually include an element of service both in subjective terms (was it good) to non-subjective terms (eg the number of rooms per room cleaner - which would be indicitive of the service).